Rahul set to visit disfigured Dalit girl in Kanpur hospital

Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh), Feb 7 (IANS) Congress MP Rahul Gandhi is Monday likely to visit the minor Dalit girl who was brutally disfigured after she resisted gangrape and is being treated at a hospital here, police sources said. Gandhi, who is scheduled to visit his constituency Amethi, is expected to make a stopover in Kanpur on his way, a police official said.

The Congress general secretary is expected to call on the girl at the local medical college, where a team of orthopaedic and plastic surgeons spent hours Sunday carrying out several rounds of surgery to restore her half-chopped ear, badly smashed fingers and deep gashes on the face.

A team of special protection group sleuths had taken positions in and around the surgical complex of GSVM Medical College, where the victim’s family was also kept under heavy security. Gandhi is expected to arrive around noon.

Sarika, 17, had to pay with physical torture for resisting gangrape by three youths of her own village, Udauli in Fatehpur, about 60 km from here, late Saturday evening when she was returning from the fields along with her friend Chaya after answering nature’s call.

Sarika was allegedly grabbed by three young men, Hari Shankar, Shiv Om and Ram Ratan, who pounced upon her, molesting her and trying to tear off her clothes. She, however, managed to raise an alarm.

Her friend Chaya sped to her house to break the news to the victim’s family members, who rushed back to rescue Sarika, who was lying on the ground with blood oozing out from different parts of her body.

“The boys had escaped after they realised that people in the village were alerted,” Sarika’s father Badlu Ram told reporters outside the operation theatre at the GSVM Medical College here.

“With the help of some other villagers, I rushed my daughter to the local hospital in Fatehpur from where police brought her to the Kanpur Medical College Sunday morning,” he added.